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A fall economic statement is never about understatement. It’s about braggadocio.

Unlike a spring budget, which triggers a confidence vote that could topple the government, a fall statement allows our baritone treasurer to muse with impunity. That’s why Finance Minister Charles Sousa, well-spoken and bespoke in a pinstriped three-piece suit, produced a hulking 214-page fiscal package plus a 10-page speech to set us straight.

Amidst the verbiage, one number stands out: Ontario’s economy will grow by a dismal 1.3 per cent this year.

To put that figure in perspective, Ontario’s treasury previously expected growth for 2013 would be a relatively healthy 2.7 per cent (that’s what it projected back in its 2011 outlook).

Oops — growth this year will be less than half what the province once counted on. A margin of error of plus-or-minus 50 per cent seems like more of a guess than a projection. Another 1.4 percentage points and we’d be in negative growth for the year — which is to say, a recession.

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With low growth comes low revenues — $5 billion less than projected, back in 2010. To eliminate the current $11.7-billion budget deficit by 2017-18, as promised, the government is counting on rapidly rising revenues from a still-elusive economic comeback.

Good luck on that. I’m not trying to be an alarmist, merely a realist about what an inexact science budgetary forecasting and economic strategizing can be.

It’s a political truism to say, “It’s about the economy, stupid.” It would be more truthful to acknowledge, “The economy is about luck, stupid.”

Which is not to say Ontarians should be fatalistic about feeble economic growth, as if our hands are tied by an invisible hand. The challenge is to lay the groundwork, strategically, for a more robust economic recovery that will one day come our way.

Ontario has had an unlucky year, economically. But we had best prepare for more opportune times, lest we get left further behind.

And we are lagging, to be sure. It would be convenient to blame Ontario’s troubles on America’s doldrums. But the inconvenient truth is that even America is outdoing Ontario this year, with a projected GDP increase of 1.6 per cent, rising to 2.6 per cent in 2014 (versus 2.1 per cent here).

What is to be done about this depressing, depression-era news? It’s no reason to be defeatist, nihilist or non-interventionist.

One of the government’s proposals (first reported here last summer) is to unleash the stash of cash held by big corporations. The Bank of Canada has targeted this as dead capital, or lazy money, some of which accrued thanks to lower corporate tax rates foolishly enacted by Ontario’s Liberals in the past.

Now, Sousa and Premier Kathleen Wynne are looking at how to make corporations “pay or play” with new tax incentives: For example, a special corporate tax rate could be lowered if companies invested in new equipment. A payroll tax could be reduced if firms allocated money to training (similar programs exist in Quebec and the U.S.).

With Ontario badly lagging the U.S. in research and development, a redesigned R&D tax incentive could be targeted solely for incremental spending. (The challenge to is to give a tax credit only for additional R&D, rather than reward existing research that would have been conducted anyway.)

To its credit, the government is also talking up industrial strategies to target specific sectors with potential for export growth. But it’s a fine line between picking winners for economic reasons, and propping up losers for political motives.

The province’s portfolio of regional development funds is clearly needed to backstop struggling industries, but given the usual local pushback and pressures, it’s anyone’s guess how discerning — or brutally strategic — this government is prepared to be.

Taken together, the fall economic statement reads like an all-season blueprint for a spring campaign platform. We shall see, as winter turns to spring, how the economics and politics work out for Wynne. And the province.

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